Trivia Knoxvillia: 12 Questions

1. Name one thing you can't expect to find at the Market Square Farmers Market.

a. Indian food

b. Milk

c. Bananas

d. Beef

2. Where is legendary football coach General Robert Neyland buried?

a. At Shady Grove Cemetery in his native Greenville, Texas

b. Underneath the south end zone in Neyland Stadium

c. At the National Cemetery on Tyson Street, near downtown

d. At Arlington National Cemetery in Washington

3. How did Happy Holler get its name?

a. It was named for N.C. "Happy" Anderson, who opened Knoxville's first filling station there

b. From the proliferation of beer joints in that section

c. From the days when it was a blissful rural vale

d. From Happy-Cola, a soft drink bottled there

4. Which victim of a Gay Street gunfight is the namesake of a substantial Alabama town?

a. Bank president Thomas O'Conner

b. Confederate General James Clanton

c. Judge John Baxter

d. Businessman Joseph Mabry

5. Which of the following were guests of the Farragut Hotel, at Gay and Clinch (now home of the French Market creperie)?

a. The New York Yankees, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

b. David Ben-Gurion, founder of the state of Israel

c. Ngo Dinh Diem, ill-fated president of South Vietnam

d. Merv Griffin, TV czar

6. What's Kingston Pike's oldest restaurant?

a. Naples

b. The Orangery

c. Long's

d. Ali Baba's Time Out Deli

7. Which common claim about Knoxville is bogus?

a. Knoxville was the birthplace of Mountain Dew

b. Knoxville is home to the biggest cinema chain in the world

c. Knoxville could have had the Grand Ole Opry

d. Knoxville was the birthplace of the Dempster Dumpster

8. Where is the no-longer-marked Birthplace of Tennessee?

a. In the parking lot at Gay and Church

b. On Capitol Hill in Nashville

c. At long-demolished Chisholm's Tavern

d. In downtown Dandridge

9. The University of Tennessee is developing its Cherokee campus across the river. What was there a century ago?

a. The graded streets of Cherokee, an unfinished residential development

b. A small farm noted for its Cherokee tomatoes

c. Dense woods so thick legend held that Cherokee still lived there

d. The first Cherokee Country Club

10. What's Knoxville's connection to the modern Olympic Games?

a. A Knoxville professor helped organize the first modern Games, in Athens in 1896.

b. A UT shot putter was on the original U.S. Olympic team.

c. The first leader of the early Pride of the Southland Marching Band composed the Olympic trumpet fanfare.

d. Before the introduction of the gold medal, the winners' marble statuettes came from Knoxville quarries

11. What was the World's Fair Philippines pavilion's unusual attraction?

a. A display of Imelda Marcos' shoes

b. The original prototype for the Manila folder

c. A rubber automobile

d. A charcoal-powered bus

12. Since the World's Fair, a structure strikingly similar to the Sunsphere has been erected in what city?

a. Dubai, United Arab Emirates

b. Barcelona, Spain

c. Astana, Kazakhstan

d. Sapporo, Japan

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Answers:

1. c. The market's main rule is that everything sold has to be produced around here.

2. c. He has a standard government-issue gravestone, just like a private's.

3. b.

4. b. County seat of Chilton County (known for its peach crop) is Clanton, Ala., pop. 9,000 and growing. It's named for James Clanton, killed in an 1871 gunfight with a former Unionist outside the Lamar House (now the Bijou Theatre).

5. You got this one free, because they're all right. The Yankees were here on an exhibition tour in 1934; Ben-Gurion and Diem were here at different times mainly to behold TVA. Griffin was here for the world premiere of one of his rare movie roles, So This is Love, a biopic about East Tennessee singer Grace Moore.

6. c. Long's Drugstore, which has always maintained a soda fountain and lunch counter, was founded in 1956, which by Kingston Pike commercial standards is prehistoric. If you guessed Naples, take half-credit. When Long's started serving shakes, there was a restaurant in the Naples building, but it was called the Wayside Inn. Naples is much more similar to its 1960s predecessor, Alberti's. Through all that, Long's has kept the same name, same layout, and more or less the same menu.

7. c. The Grand Ole Opry started in Nashville in 1925, before Knoxville had anything similar. Its radio station, WSM, dwarfed anything in Knoxville, with a signal that could be received through much of the nation.

8. a. It's the site of the three-week constitutional convention of 1796, attended by representatives of all the territory's counties.

9. a. It went bust after the recession of 1893. The bridge that connected it to Kingston Pike, across the river, was still there until the 1930s.

10. a. Sometime classics professor Ebenezer Alexander, who was born and died in downtown Knoxville, was ambassador to Greece at the time of the first modern Olympics. He encouraged and enabled U.S. participation in the Games, and was a personal donor to and supporter of the cause. As a Greek professor at both UT and the University of North Carolina, he was especially excited about this revival of an ancient tradition.